Archives For opinions

confessions of a lapsed catholic

April 26, 2005 — Leave a comment

when i was 14 i expressed an interesting in joining the priesthood. the priest i expressed that desire to, said the day i became a priest the earth would open up and swallow my parish.

i suppose i should quantify his response, before i expressed my desire to join the priesthood, i was commenting on what a cushy gig it seemed like; your choice of the ladies, free room and board and a car; i was thinking practically. some years later he and i had an opportunity to converse and he asked me if i was still interested in joining the clergy, but by that time i was completely disenchanted with the church. strangely, `our` new pope leaves me with the same bitter aftertaste i had when i abandoned the church.

growing up in Trinidad, i got a radically different perspective on Catholicism. i grew with a local archbishop and mass in English, even the hymnal was filled with songs written for us, by us. there wasn`t a church choir worth its salt without a pannist and a rhythm section. the church was us and we were the church and part of that was the fact we lived in a plural society.

our nation`s motto is every creed and race find an equal place and at least on the surface it applies. there are Christians of every denomination, Muslims, Hindus and if at no other time, we appreciate each other for the holidays. we celebrate, Christmas, Divali and Eid off the top, plus a bunch of others in between. we don`t have a large Jewish community otherwise they would be in the mix as well.

my point in all of this; the new thrust of the papacy seems geared towards extremism and exclusion which will continue to push more and more people away from the church.

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WANTED: Mountain Property, Easily Defendable w/Fresh Water Supply and Companions

April 20, 2005 — Leave a comment

Somewhat liberal, inter-racial, couple with children seek like minded individuals to form community in remote, easily-defended, arable location.

Must be articulate, well read, willing to fight for personal freedoms. Preference will be give to people with extensive and diverse libraries, as well as those with  woodsman, farming or maintenance skills.

Property should be remote with arable land and fresh water supply and room to grow.

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out of the mouths of babes and sucklings

April 19, 2005 — Leave a comment

the boychick begins his week of standardised testing that is TCAP today. it`s funny i had recently arrived when he was doing it last year and the girls had their own batch of equivalency examinations.

in Trinidad at the end of elementary school system you take an examination that determines your choice of high school education based on how well you do. in my days it was called the Common Entrance exam and the higher your total score the better your chances of attending a prestigious parochial high school. these days it`s called the SEA and the intensity and price of failure is even greater. my elder daughter took it last year and went to the school of her choice and mine, my younger daughter took it about six weeks ago and we`re fairly confident that she`s heading to the same school. this ends their standardised testing on a national level for at least five years until it`s time for  their O` Level exams.

the boychick, on the other handm is stuck in this testing rut annually. last year i very nearly pitched a fit when his then teacher marked an essay he work diligently on poorly based on his grammar. according to her and last year`s TCAPs the boychick has problems with sentence structure. which seems kind of odd, see the volume of reading he does, the fact that his mother has a Masters in English and i`m a grammar nazi. in fact it`s not that he has a problem, but they have an issue with the fact that he can construct complex sentences at this grade level. the boychick does not write staccato sentences. they want him to write like this. he was punished for not writing like this.

the joys of standardised testing, if you don`t fit in the box, we`ll force fit you. what`s funny is that at some point someone asked the boychick if he found the TCAPs difficult and he replied, “it can`t be difficult they`re not supposed to leave anyone behind.” and that pretty much sums it up, in order to make sure no one gets left behind they`re hampering the rest of the children.

not all children progress at the same rate, granted, but when you the pace you set is for the slowest child the rest of the children who get what they`re supposed to be working on are going to get bored and distracted while they wait and that`s not going to help them learn anything either.

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excuse me while i kiss this guy

April 18, 2005 — Leave a comment

i`ve got purple haze stuck in my head this morning and it contains one of the most misheard lyric in all of creation, so i though i`d add a bit of whimsy to the post.

last Thursday i went to the graduation of a friend from the Nashville Peace and Justice Center Leadership programme. i have to say, i must be developing social skills in my old age, because i went, i interacted and i participated and that`s a big deal for me.

my mother concluded about the time i was about thirteen i was anti-social and told me so and i really had no retort. i pretty much grew up around adults in a time where the belief was that children were to be seen and not heard, so i learned to keep myself occupied; mostly with a book. it`s not that i lack social graces; my mother instilled those in me early on; it`s just that once the preliminaries are done, i`ll find a quiet corner of the room and stay there.

if i have a book or access to a book i`m pretty much lost for the evening, however if i don`t have any reading material, i observe people. i took two years of sociology because observing people en masse fascinates me. i don`t like to make generalisations, but i think i have a disdain for people because the conversations tend to be insipid and my own bias against stupid people. stupidity, in my humble estimation, has nothing to an education or lack thereof, but an inability to form opinions of one`s own or accept the validity or entitlement of other opinions.

the point of the leadership programme is to help you get involved and help organise grassroots campaigns in your community. and the good wife and i have signed up for the next session. part of my rationale was that i can interact with these people. i may not agree with everything all the people in the programme stand for but i can learn something and it will also help me get more involved in something that i have a vested interest in; immigrant rights.

i had a detailed conversation with one of the recent graduates about immigration rights; which was her forte; and she was tell me that the USCIS sanctioned doctor i went to for my medical has a habit of having female immigrants get nude for examination without a female assistant or family member in the room. as far as i know that`s illegal. what makes this worse is that i had the same medical recently and i didn`t have to undress.

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i have a funny hat, can i be the pope?

April 8, 2005 — Leave a comment

ello my name is keifel and i`m a recovering Catholic.

ever since they prematurely announced that John Paul II had died, i`ve pondering who they`re going to select as the next pope. JP II was elected when i was eight and was sort of a defining moment in my career as a Catholic. i had just started preparing for my first communion and his ordination was my biggest religious experience at the time. of course, i got older and more cynical and disenchanted with the Catholic church, but the politics of it will never cease to fascinate me.

i firmly believe that he was dead on Friday and the extra day was just to give the cardinals enough time to figure out whole the candidates are going to be. there is an electoral college type vote for the next pope and somewhat like the electoral college the greatest populations are under represented. the old school and massively declining European Catholics have the largest block of votes, while the Central, South America and Africa with the largest populations of Catholics have the smallest number of votes.

i have no idea where i managed to pick up the information but i managed to pick the four front runners for the papacy, spot on. although in light of the long reign of the second non-Italian pope, i don`t think the hierarchy are quite ready for a black pope, but it may be in their best interest to go `brown`. if only to ensure they don`t ostracise the only growing Catholic populations. whoever they pick, there probably aren`t going to be any radical changes to church policy anytime in the near future.

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is science fact, science fiction made real

April 1, 2005 — Leave a comment

or is science fiction an imaging of science fact.

a friend sent me an article from Rolling Stone and as i was reading the section about suburbs, the burbclaves of Neal Stephenson`s Snow Crash came to mind and i wonder how far away from that particular vision of the future we are.

i wonder how influenced early cell phone and PDA designers were by Star Trek and what these items would look like if it weren`t for them. is the Orwellian nature of the US, as a result of us having a fictional point of reference?

i wish this train of though was more coherent of cohesive. my brain has latched onto the idea and it`s spiralling off in myriad directions and i can`t seem to find the words to corral them into a cognisant post.

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it’s the inefficiency, stupid

March 30, 2005 — Leave a comment

i am paying the INS, BCIS, USCIS, Department of Homeland Security, whatever you want to call them to be inefficient and as an anal retentive planner, that just pisses me right off.

i`m currently living in the US on a K-3 visa; which allows for the spouse of a US citizen to regularise their living situation while the await applications in process. currently we have my change of status application in process for me to become a permanent resident. my K-3 visa was issued last March and is valid for two years, which means it expires in March 2006. keep this date in mind, there will be a quiz later.

according to the receipt i received when my application to change my status was received, this application takes between 120 -180 days to process. so if my math is correct, my application should be approved some time between September 7 and November 30, using a 5 day work week plus a couple of days for holidays in between, which means i should need to renew my K-3 visa or the attendant work authorisation right?

i wish, nothing related to bureaucracy is ever simple. i had to call to make an appointment for biometric services; read photographed and fingerprinted; and asked what the current processing time was on my application; as of March 25, 2005, the Memphis office is processing applications received on September 13, 2002. that`s a two and a half year backlog. which means i have to apply to renew my current visa and work authorisation.

and now it`s going to cost me at least another $310 in actual fees and who knows how much in time and just sheer frustration to get this done and all over again. all thanks to the bureaucratic inefficiency. isn`t there someone i can sue for this?

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isn’t it ironic, don’t you think

March 28, 2005 — Leave a comment

references to Alanis aside, i do know the meaning of irony.

and in a case of irony writ large i saw the trailer for The Honeymooners movie this weekend and i am afraid. who thought it would be a good idea to remake one of the most racists programmes in television history and by making the cast all black it would somehow make it right.

they did this last year in a manner of speaking with Walking Tall. i was mildly amused to think that there were a number of good old southern boys that were getting their panties in a bunch that that their folk hero was being played by someone that weren`t white. but that amusement was not enough for me to get over being appalled.

when it comes to race, i try to avoid generalisations and to reserve judgement on an individual basis but i`m going to make one now, i`m appalled by the state of movies, particular movies marketed to black audiences. they are the most insipid and trite pieces of crap. i`m sure there are the good individual flicks but for the most part if you want to see movie with an all black cast you`re saddled with movies like Soul Plane which only serve to reinforce stereotypes.

i hadn`t planned to mention Guess Who, because the concept alone makes my blood boil but i couldn`t leave it alone. are there no original ideas left? who the hell thought that it would be a good idea? the original film has been one of my favourites for a long time and now it`s image is forever tarnished by this crock of steaming faeces.

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what me guilty?

March 11, 2005 — Leave a comment

i`ve been catching snippets of the Jackson trail every now and again, i`m not really that interested, but i`m getting inundated with them whether i want to or not and it`s given me enough to form one solid opinion.

whether or not he is found guilty, they need to send the parents of the child(ren) he is purported to have molested straight to jail. i`m sorry, i don`t care what kind of childhood issues Jackson had, this is not the first time these accusations have come up and for you to voluntarily send your children unaccompanied to the house of an adult once accused of inappropriate conduct with a child is a criminal act.

i`m not speaking legally, i`m speaking as a parent. what do you have to be thinking to voluntarily send your child to hang out with a 40-something old man, unsupervised. most normal parents wont send their child to spend time at their friends` houses, unless they meet and approve of the parents and even then there is a degree of worry, because this person isn`t you, much less to the home an adult man. what were these people thinking?

is it possible to become so star-struck that all good sense flees? or is it greed; are people are willing to sacrifice their child`s innocence for the possibility of the big pay off?

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are you experienced?

March 9, 2005 — Leave a comment

even without a formal education there are things i am qualified to do based on years of experience. there are things i will try my hand at because it seems straight forward and i`m fairly intelligent person. then there are things i have a natural aptitude for, but that doesn`t mean i`m going to make it my profession. which brings me to Bono.

now coming from a developing nation and seeing first hand the effects of World Bank policy, they`re not my favourite organisation in the world; but come on Bono?

what are his qualifications? he`s an advocate for third-world debt relief. how nice. that does not qualify him to run the World Bank. does he have a degree in economics, a background in finance? i`d really be interested to know.

you really want to do something about third world debt? how about giving up a percentage of the sales of the last U2 album. every little bit counts. jetting in and out and hobnobbing with other wealthy people and talking about bad the situation is doesn`t help.

when i was working in Florida, the agency i worked planned and staged an event to raise money for a food bank. it was a $500-a-head, three course charity dinner that eventually cost about $60,000 to produce and this figure didn`t included the wasted food in unfinished courses. the irony has never escaped me, in Trinidad there used to be a poor man`s dinner to benefit various organisations that were trying to help the less fortunate, it was black tie event that you paid through the nose to attend and dinner consisted of broth and a hard roll prepared by one of the organisations who would eventually benefit from the funds. that makes sense to me. if you`re really interested in helping people you need to make the sacrifice and not just when there is a press opportunity.

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